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Possessing a strong desire to make things since I was a child, I have worked with tools
my entire life, and have often gained great insight about myself through the tactile act
of using a tool, and the choices that come with that use. This project reflects that
desire in many ways; but the specific tool I chose to investigate for this project is
data-a far more abstract approach than a traditional tool.
I am fascinated with data and its ability to represent information about the world as
ideas that come from very real things-often things we can touch and hold and effect our
daily lives. I'm also interested in the sense of detachment data can produce. For example,
it is very different to read about statistics of homelessness than to be homeless.
Following the March, 2011 earthquake in Japan, an independent website called Safecast.org
was formed to provide information about the radiation levels at various locations throughout
Japan gathered by volunteers and citizens. Safecast is a global project working to empower
people with data, primarily by mapping radiation levels and building a sensor network, enabling
people to contribute and freely use the data collected.
I recorded this live data from 8 sites in Japan, over the course of a 24-hour period,
and use the radiation levels from each hour to determine the radius of 8 spheres in a
virtual object represented in 3D modeling software. From these 24 virtual objects, I
created a series of templates as tools to make this data physically tangible, by shaping
plaster turned on a lathe. The resulting objects, similar to a graph, can be touched and held
and take on a physical nature that data often loses-turning a series of abstract sensor
readings into an object with mass and volume, and an undeniable physical presence.
I chose to allow the final artwork to remain as a set of tools, a tool that has the potential
to make real information that has consequences on millions of lives. Providing the tool rather
than the object, it is the user of the tool that is left with decision to give physical
form to the data, and to acknowledge its presence.